Toolkit for Meet the Family

The feature article shows how family visits can ultimately benefit teachers, students and families if they are done properly. Spending time in a student’s home can deepen the relationship, bridge cultural divides and humanize you as the teacher. This toolkit gives you a chance to work with colleagues to determine how family visits could benefit you and your students. By looking at resources related to home visits, you will learn more about the possibilities for making them work and consider how you might incorporate them into your practice.

Essential Questions

1. How are family visits beneficial?
2. What obstacles prevent teachers and schools from visiting families?
3. How can you make family visits work in your own school context?

Procedure

1. After reading the feature article, come together with a group of colleagues. As a group, spend some time looking at the following links. Alternatively, you can divide up the links so that each of you looks at one or two of them and takes responsibility for sharing what you have discovered:
   • The Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project
   • National Education Association (NEA) Foundation Issue Brief: Parent/Teacher Home Visits
   • Teaching Tolerance’s Family and Community Engagement Tips
   • HOME WORKS! The Teacher Home Visit Program
   • ACTIONN: Acting in Community Together in Organizing Northern Nevada, a blog featuring home-visit testimonials from Washoe County, Nevada
   • The St. Paul Federation of Teachers Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project
2. Come together to discuss what you have learned from the article as well as the other resources. Discuss these questions:
   • How are family visits helpful for students and families? What helps maximize the extent to which they help?
   • How are family visits helpful for teachers and schools? What helps maximize the extent to which they help?
   • What obstacles might prevent family visits from working in your specific school context? Make a list of the obstacles and challenges. Brainstorm ways to overcome or work through these challenges.
3. Make a plan of action that you can share with your administrators as a way of opening a conversation about implementing a family visits program in the future.